A data carrier of this type is already known. European Patents 0 000 868 and 0 014 826 describe a material with reversible fixed and temperature-variable light extinction, which is designed as an erasable data carrier consisting of a pair of substances, which has a decreasing light extinction with increasing heating temperature, for example, on heating from the state of maximum light extinction to a temperature of transparency below a transition temperature, and then cooling to below a low temperature value.
The recording and erasing process can be repeated as often as desired. The recording can be made by finely beamed infrared or luminous radiation or by contact heat. The known data carrier is thus suitable for the erasable recording of numbers, letters, pictures, patterns, etc. The recordings can be made either in transparent form on an opaque field or in opaque form on a transparent field.
The goal of the invention was to develop a suitable device for recording optical information on a data carrier of this type.